On the turn of a sixpence, the continuing story of Manley Hall and Sam Mendel

The Hall in 1879

Yesterday I was pondering a visit to Manley Hall in the June of 1879.*

This had been the grand home of Samuel Mendel popularly known at the time as the “merchant prince”

It was a magnificent house of fifty rooms set in 80 acres of grounds which included a greenhouse, an orangery, deer park, fountains and ornamental lakes.**

The estate extended east from Upper Chorlton Road as far as the Independent College, and south to Clarendon Road.  Today Manley Park is all that is left of those extensive grounds and the rest is a mix of houses.

Manley Hall 1888-93

But back in the 1860s and 70s Sam Mendel’s home was reckoned to be everything a wealthy self made man could desire and the inside of the house was as impressive as the grounds.

Here were paintings by Constable, Gainsborough, Leighton, Millais and Turner along with fine furniture, silver plate and old Chelsea porcelain.

So much that when in the spring of 1875 the contents of the house were put up for sale, the auction lasted for five days.

Not that Mr Mendel stayed around to watch for after more than a decade at Manley Hall he moved south to London and on to Hastings coming to terms with his dramatic fall from prosperity.

He had made his wealth transporting textiles to India and Australia around the Cape of Good Hope faster than any of his rivals, and from his offices in Cooper Street and a succession of warehouses around the city he was recognised as a successful entrepreneur who was never out of the papers.


But a too ambitious desire to add to his vast collection of art  left him in serious debt to an art dealer. 

Samuel Mendel

For a while the general public were able for a charge to wander the gardens and enjoy both the floral displays as well as performances by a variety of brass bands.

There were also various schemes floated to turn the estate into a “great pleasure resort.  A winter palace was to be erected which should contain an art gallery, concert hall, promenade, library, assembly room, skating rinks, baths, and refreshment rooms.  Shareholders were to be allowed to use the park for promenade purposes on Sundays, and the hall was to be converted into a club, membership of which should be limited to holders of one hundred or more shares in the company.”***

But these and other plans came to nothing and it was pretty much death by a succession of small building plots as bits of the estate were sold off for development or turned into a golf course for the Manchester Golf Club.

The Hall still attracted the curious, and so it was in the June of 1904 that this couple wandered into the grounds and had their picture taken at the rear of the grand old house.  By then its years of neglect were only all too clear to see from the overgrown kitchen garden and bricked up rear windows and was demolished in 1905.

The rear of the Hall in June 1904

But like all such stories there is still more.  Back in 1875 the house had been bought by the coal merchant Ellis Lever for £120,000 and according to the historian Cliff Hayes Mr Ellis never paid up.****

This in itself is intriguing but made more so by a letter from Mr Ellis in the Times from June 1887 in which he deplored the abandonment of the plan to transform the estate into pleasure resort.

“There is not in the United Kingdom a town that has greater need than Manchester of healthy and refining influences, and there is not a more attractive and charming property than Manley-park.  

But while the people of Manchester and Salford are perishing for lack of pure and healthy surroundings this magnificent property is being allowed to go to decay or become absorbed  by the builder.

The Hall soon after the sale in 1875

Manley-park is thoroughly well wooded, and all the trees being vigorous and healthy.  That there should fall to the axe man to be replaced by rows of houses I look upon as a misfortune to the city.”*****

Which raises all sorts of questions about the involvement of Mr Ellis in the estate but those are for another time.

As for Samuel Mendel he died in 1884.

Pictures; from the Lloyd Collection and map of Manley Hall from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1888-93, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and  picture of Sam Mendel, from a photograph by Franz Baum, 22 St Ann’s Square, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

*"the frown of fortune"...... the story of Sam Mendel and Manley Hall in Whalley Range,

** The land had cost £250,000 and the house another £50,000 to build.

*** City News on October 8, 1904, quoted in Manley Hall, http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/gone/manleyhall.html

****Hayes. Cliff, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1999
.***** The Times, June 11 1887

The not so different bits of where we live, part 2 ............. Greenwich

Now I am always intrigued at those more recent photographs of where we live.

So while pictures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are fascinating often everything is so different that it is almost looking at a different landscape.

But those from say the 1960s onwards are often almost the same but not quite, and with this in mind here over the next few days are some from the camera of Jean Gammons all taken in the late 1970s.

And that is all I shall say,

Picture; looking down Greenwich, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

Greenwich Park, the moment a full 53 years ago .......... nu 1 the walk

It will be a full 55 years ago but the memory of that walk through Greenwich Park on a Saturday in September 1971 has never left me.

I was in my second year at Manchester Poly and the pull of Well Hall and the family were still strong and so I found myself back home with three friends.

Lois was from Weston and Mike and John from Leeds and we travelled down from Manchester in John’s van on the Friday night.

Even now I have to say I haven’t forgotten the kindness of David Hatch who agreed to put Lois, Mike and John up on his floor.

It was a brief stay and most of it is a blur except for the walk from the gates on the Blackheath side through the park to Wolf’s statue, the observatory and that view down to the river.

At any time of the year that short stroll is pretty good but in late autumn it is magic.  The leaves are on the turn and the bright sunlight can still surprise you with its degree of warmth and the way it brings out the colours all around you.

The rest of the day and the weekend is lost to me but that hour and a bit were and remain special, more so because I was showing off my home.

All of which just leaves me to reflect on the postcard which was marketed in the USA and carried the imprint of the American YMCA of which there must be a story, but not for now.

Location; Greenwich

Picture; Greenwich Park, 1905 from the series Greenwich, marketed in 1911-12 by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

A Chorlton ghost sign ……

Not all ghost signs have to be very old.

They are the remnants of businesses and products which long ago vanished, but whose faded signs still appear above doorways, shops fronts and on gable ends.

Many belong to the 19th or early 20th centuries, but here is one that many here in Chorlton will remember and like me used for building jobs.

They were B W Gray and Sons Ltd and were situated on Oswald Road tradeding there until the firm was dissolved in May 2016.

I can’t be sure when the business started up but I know it was incorporated in 1994.

But being Chorlton there will be some who will remember when it started trading.

Location; Oswald Road

Picture; the ghost sign, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One camera ….. 1965 ….. and a collection of lost scenes

It is 61 years ago that this collection of images was taken.

"Clearance in Hulme", 1965

They cover Manchester, Stretford and out to Chorlton and Wythenshawe and are a mix of industrial scenes, some old historic buildings and more than a few of well-known city centre sites.

What they have in common was the year they were taken and that originally they were colour slides.

The collection was donated to me by the daughter of the photographer, but somewhere along the line their identity was lost, although I am still looking for the letter, email or Facebook message which alerted me to the names of the woman who donated them and the photographer.

"Old Shambles' 1965

I hope by posting them the donor will come forward and I can change the credit from the 1965 collection to a name.

The first two are both of lost Manchester.

I have no idea where in Hulme the clearance area was, and I only have vague memories of the old Shambles.

But they are a unique record of how the City was in 1965 and just how it was about to change.

Location; Manchester

Pictures, “Clearance in Hulme” and “The Old Shambles showing Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar,” 1965, from the 1965 Collection

"the frown of fortune"...... the story of Sam Mendel and Manley Hall in Whalley Range

Now I don’t usually do stately homes, but back in 1879 I might just have made the effort to visit Manley Hall which had once been the home of the 'merchant prince' Sam Mendel.

It was an impressive place built in the Italianate style with fifty rooms in 80 acres of grounds which included a greenhouse, an orangery, deer park fountains and ornamental lakes.

Added to this was a fine collection of paintings including works by Constable, Gainsborough, Leighton, Millais and Turner.

All of which reflected the vast wealth of Sam Mendel who had made that wealth by being able to ship textiles to India and Australia around the Cape of Good Hope  faster than his competitors.

“He was the son of a rope manufacturer who started business off Blackfriars Street, succeeding to the business of Mr. Robert Gardiner, a Levant merchant [and] built a warehouse in Dickenson Street, removing thrice to Booth Street, to Portland Street, and finally to his splendid warehouse in Chepstow Street.  

It is said of him he was never known to do a shabby act, but in the end he felt the frown as well as the smile of fortune.  

In 1875 his magnificent estate – Manley House- was the scene of a memorable sale, and it has ever since been but the ghost of its former self, in spite of effort after effort to galvanise it into life. The estate was cut up into building lots, and the tenantless hall survives only to witness the short-lived greatness of its builder.”*

And the frown of fortune was no less than a too ambitious desire to add to his vast collection of art which left him in serious debt to an art dealer. 

The house and its contents along with the 80 acres were put up for sale in the spring of 1875 and the auction of the contents stretched out over five days.

Not that I would have been wealthier enough to consider biding for the fine furniture, paintings, silver plate and old Chelsea porcelain.

Nope, for me it would have a walk around the gardens when they were opened to the public later in 1875.

And I rather suspect it would have been the piece in the Manchester Guardian of May 30 1879 which pushed me out of Chorlton and in to Whalley Range to walk the gardens, because the “announcement of yesterday with regard to the coming sale of this fine estate ... [means] that in all probability Manley Hall will not much longer remain open to inspection.”**

So despite the poor weather which had done little for “the great floral display which might very properly have been expected at the Whitsun Holiday” there was still “much to admire in the greenhouses and ferneries.”  

Along with “the Clown cricketers who were to play in the park on Monday, Thursday and Saturday and the Latelle ‘aerial bicyclists’ who have lately completed a successful engagement at the Westminster Aquarium [and] Mr. J.A. Whelan of Huddersfield who will make an ascent in his balloon ‘The Duke of Edinburgh’ on Thursday and Friday as well as a variety of amusements for visitors.”

But I rather think it would have been the “bands of music” which would have attracted me, one of which may well have been our own Chorlton Brass Band.  They had been formed in the 1820s and while I do not have a complete list of where they performed, there are records of them at Bell Vue, Lytham, Blackpool and Stalybridge as well as closer to home in Chorlton and up at Barlow Hall.

Now Samuel had sponsored the band during the 1860s and it would be nice to think that they were there at Manley Hall in the June of 1879.

And that perhaps is an appropriate point to close, for Samuel’s eclipse appears to have been a loss for Chorlton.

For not only did he sponsor the band but was a very active patron of the old parish church and in that great schism over the building of a new church and ist location on Edge Lane he remained with the group championing the existing building.

Next; the fate of the Hall and something more on Sam.

Location; Whalley Range, Manchester

Pictures; of Manley Hall circa 1878 from the Lloyd Collection, and picture of Sam Mendel, from a photograph by Franz Baum, 22 St Ann’s Square, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

* Shaw, William Arthur, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

** Manchester Guardian May 30 1879

One Acre Allotment and more stories of rural Eltham

One Acre Allotments, 1908

Even in the most built up urban areas there are clues to our rural past.

Here in Chorlton there is still the village green with the old school, the parish graveyard, two old pubs and some former farmhouses along with a barn where the Methodists held services at the beginning of the 19th century.

And Eltham is no different; although I have to say this bit of what was once Kent and is now south east London has managed to retain far more of its old fine houses.

But it is not of fine houses that I want to focus on today but the intriguingly named “One Acre Allotments" which have their story.

They were all that was left of the fields to the north of the High Street beyond the line of buildings and had you had a mind to you could have walked them all the way up to the woods and Shooters Hill.

Our field was known locally as One Acre and was directly behind what is now the school on Roper Street.

One Acre  1844, One Acre  is numbered 251, 

It was meadow land and formed a block of meadows which stretched east across along the present Gourock Road and also included the field that ran along what is now the west side of Roper Street.
and was “often used to accommodate for the night the herds of cattle or flocks of sheep that were being driven out of Kent into the London market.”* 

A practice which seeks to remind us that most of our big cities were supplied with fresh food which before the railway was walked to its destination and joined the livestock permanently kept in urban centres.

In total there were four of these meadow fields and only one is officially listed with a name.  In the 1840s they were farmed by different tenants but three were owned by Sir Gregory Page Turner while that on the western side of Roper Street was Glebe land.

It might not be good history but I do catch myself wandering down the lane which is now Roper Street and heading off onto the footpath where the land finished.  Had I done this in the 1840s there at the end of the lane would have the stile and the start of the footpath.

The Smithy and One Acre Meadow, 1858-74

And  I had a choice, turn east and by degree I would have ended up at Shooters Hill, and if I gone west along what was sometimes called “The Slip” which ran parallel to the High Street I would have reached the parish church.

And if that was not enough choices at both the start of The Slip and at its end there were paths off to Well Hall and Shooters Hill.

Now I rather think there may also be stories about the people who rented these four fields.  Each is known to us, and two appear to have been comfortably off describing themselves variously as Gentleman, Independent or Merchant.

But as ever there seems a little bit of mystery and yes it is our field which the records show was rented by a George Smith snr in 1839, but exactly which George Smith is a problem, for there were three living in Eltham during the 1820s into the next two decades.

The most obvious was George Smith who listed himself as a blacksmith during the period.  He lived in the High Street had a son called George which might explain the description George Smith snr and his smithy was at the bottom of the lane where it joined the High Street.

If this is him the fates were not kind, by 1851 he is in hospital and his son is living with his former wife who had reverted to her maiden name. And like so much of the history I like this just gets a tad messier, because George Smith snr is recorded as renting 40 acres along with a “farmhouse, barn, yard and building” which seems a bit out of the range of a blacksmith.

But we shall see.

*R.R.C.Gregory, The Story of Royal Eltham
Pictures; One Acre Allotments from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on
The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm detail of Eltham, and detail of the Smithy and One Acre Meadow,detail of Eltham High Street, 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx and detail of smithy, the lane and the meadow land from the OS map of Kent 1858-74